Well, I’ll be! Trump is getting a little bit of a honeymoon, for a change
He certainly didn’t get one last time.
But see this:
Overall, Republicans today are more excited about what Trump will do as president now than they were in 2016 when he was first elected.
Democrats say they feel more scared about what Trump might do than they did in 2016, and a large majority of Democrats think as president he will threaten their rights and freedoms. But at the same time, there seems to be a sense of exhaustion, as fewer than half of Democrats feel motivated to oppose Trump right now.
There are a lot of poll results at the link, with simple charts.
And here’s a relevant clip from CNN:
There are three main reasons for this, the first two being the most important:
(1) People have endured the Biden years and the prospect of Harris, and are soundly rejecting them.
(2) People experienced Trump’s first term and it was pretty good, especially in retrospect.
(3) The opposition is somewhat tired – for the moment, anyway.
I think there are quite a few people like me who in 2016 were happy Hillary Clinton lost but were apprehensive about Trump, the unknown and potential loose cannon. Now he has a track record that is reassuring – although of course anything can happen.
Hard for a Tiger to change its stripes, but Trump is doing OK – so far.
As far as (3) ‘The opposition is somewhat tired‘ goes – am working on a post (A New Dawn: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) as 48th President?), and research so far suggests Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) isn’t tired or waiting until the “honeymoon” is over.
One simple The Hill article, with her at the bottom of that list, and her being on that list made news around the world.
“(3) The opposition is somewhat tired – for the moment, anyway.”
They’re collecting their thoughts and are eagerly anticipating their next thrust at the incoming administration. Those people may or may not be tired, but they *never* sleep.
The depth of the lies that would lead Democrats to think Trump will threaten their rights and freedoms is a major part of the problem. Perhaps once they see, by next June or so, that none of the predicted assaults on them are happening, some of them will wise up.
Kate (4:47 pm) said: “Perhaps once they see, by next June or so, that none of the predicted assaults on them are happening, some of them will wise up.”
Fear not, Kate. If “none of the predicted assaults on them are happening,” lefties will eagerly invent and then plant narratives to fill the erstwhile vacuum.
M J R, they will do so, but there may be diminishing numbers who will believe the nonsense. Or so I hope.
Kate, I’ll second that “hope” emotion.
But I remain skeptical, because that’s who I am — and who they are.
Also … the Zeitgeist has shifted. It’s not just a random breather which finally came due for Trump.
Things are different. That ain’t forever neither. But for now the wind’s at our back.
Pray that our leaders — so many ex-Democrats BTW, including Trump himself — can make the most of it.
Things are different. Indeed, huxley.
In other times, we may have seen issues we don’t quite grasp going to the Supreme Court, supporting a flaky character in another country, change in a school’s curriculum when our kids have already graduated.
But this time, it was in our face; grocery prices, trans jocks running over our daughters, girls holding it in school so as to avoid the restrooms, a brother passed over for promotion or a kid for a scholarship due to racial issues. The guy who beat up a woman downtown earlier this week had been arrested for the same thing last week. And it was the wife of a colleague at work.
This time it was in our face and it was, “What are you going to do about it, huh?”
@ Richard Aubrey > “This time it was in our face and it was, “What are you going to do about it, huh?” —
–so we did it.
This election epitomized the old maxim: A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality.
Updated to “A Trump voter is anyone who has been mugged by reality.”
Except that a lot of the cross-over voters haven’t become conservatives, they just don’t want to keep living under Leftist rule.
Maybe that will change if they keep focused on what Trump does rather than on what the Democrat media says.
Except that a lot of the cross-over voters haven’t become conservatives, they just don’t want to keep living under Leftist rule.
AesopFan:
I understand that at many Trump rallies the audience was asked how many were Democrats.
A substantial number raised their hands. And they were all given a big hand.
We are the Big Tent now.
@ huxley > I applaud the Trump-voting Democrats for realizing that their Party has been captured by the radical Left.
They aren’t instantly right-wing conservatives because of that.
Trump isn’t either, not on everything, and his nominees are all over the field of center & right-wing values.
I suspect that they are literal centrists or classical liberals (which IMO is what many Republicans are) who just can’t abide the far left, and are willing to go along with the candidate whose team is closer to their values.
“We are the Big Tent now.”
Someone who agrees with you on (say) 50% of your policies is better to have on your side than voting with the other team.
Maybe their conversion to working with Republicans will last, and hopefully their retention of center-left priorities won’t pull the GOP too much further left (it’s already gone some ways that direction, mostly because of the allure of Deep State power and perks).
Let’s see how things play out over the next four years.